Hyperstructure Maintenance Costs in Large-scale Wikis

Wiki systems have developed over the past years as lightweight, community-editable, web-based hypertext systems. With the emergence of Semantic Wikis, these collections of interlinked documents have also gained a dual role as ad-hoc RDF graphs. However, their roots lie at the limited hypertext capabilities of the World Wide Web: embedded links, without support for composite objects or transclusion. In this paper, we present experimental evidence that hyperstructure changes, as opposed to content changes, form a substantial proportion of editing effort on a large-scale wiki. The experiment is set in the wider context of a study of how the technologies developed during decades of hypertext research may be applied to improve management of wiki document structure and, with semantic wikis, knowledge structure

Open semantic hyperwikis

Wikis are lightweight, community-editable, web-based hypertext systems, which can be described as a website that anybody can edit. From this collaborative base has grown significant efforts at large-scale knowledge management such as Wikipedia. Recently, ‘semantic’ wiki systems have been developed with typed links, such that the structure of nodes and links is analogous to an RDF graph of resources and arcs: a machineprocessable representation of the relations between articles which can form part of the web of linked data. Despite this, the hypermedia side of wiki systems has so far largely been constrained to the web model of simple embedded, unidirectional links. This research considers the hypertext origins of wiki systems, asks, and answers how the technologies developed during decades of hypertext research may be applied to better manage their document, and thus knowledge, structure. We present experimental evidence supporting the hypothesis that additional hypermedia features would be useful to wiki editors on both macro- and micro-scales. Quantitative analysis of editing logs from a large-scale wiki shows that hyperstructure changes form a substantial proportion of editing effort. Conversely, qualitative user studies show that individual user editing can be better supported by classical but since overlooked hypertext features such as first-class links and transclusion. We then specify an extensive model for a ‘open semantic hyperwiki’ system which draws from these fields, based around first-class links with support for transclusion and advanced functional link types, with defined semantics for the role of versioning and parametric nodes in the linked data world, while mindful to preserve the core simplicity that allows non-expert users to contribute. This is followed by a practical approach to its implementation in terms of an existing experimental modular wiki foundation, and the actual prototype implementation, which has been made available as open source software. Finally, we work through applying the system to a set of real-world use cases which are currently employing classic, non-semantic wiki software, and evaluate the implementation in comparison to a conventional semantic wiki in a user study.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

On construction, performance, and diversification for structured queries on the semantic desktop

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Diversity of journalisms. Proceedings of the ECREA Journalism Studies Section and 26th International Conference of Communication (CICOM) at University of Navarra

These Proceedings gather the research works presented to the Conference “Diversity of Journalisms: Shaping Complex Media Landscapes”, held in Pamplona (Spain), the 4th and 5th of July, 2011. This event was co-organised by ECREA Journalism Studies Section and the School of Communication of the University of Navarra